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Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#81

Post by robotnikman »

accrual wrote: post #18

I've been happy with Kbin so far. It has a pretty standard sign-up process (username, password, email, verify email), followed by subscribing to a few magazines (subreddit equivalents) and then you're free to browse and post. There's enough new content flowing that I personally don't feel I ever run out of things to browse. It's federated with Lemmy and Mastodon, so posts from those platforms seamlessly appear in the…

Works very well for me too. Also, I see a lot of people here saying lemmy and other alternatives to reddit will not attract as many users as reddit.

But maybe that is a good thing? Being a popular hangout on the internet seems to be a curse more than anything from my observation over the last decade. If an alternative reaches an amount of active users similar to the early years of Reddit, I would call that a win.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#82

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

davidktr wrote: post #75
xboxnolifes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we use reddit in entirely different ways. I don't use the front page. I'm not subscribed to any main subreddit. I use subreddits to find information about my interests: Individual game subreddits, Financial information, Product reviews. Does everyone who has strong dislike of reddit stay subscribed to /r/news and /r/worldnews (and others)? I know those subs ruin my feeds and my mood. Otherwise, I don't se…

Not OP but I feel like them. Been on Reddit since 2008, daily user, exclusively used niche subreddits. It was an addiction. I feel so much better since quitting it end of last year. I read books now, or the actual material reddit was talking about ("haha who reads the article amirite"), watch a ton of great stuff on youtube, read more discussions + submissions here. My life has improved considerably.

I suggest a more hybrid model. I’m lucky my local Reddit (the subreddit for my local geographic area) isn’t an Astro-turfed cesspit so I can get a lot of use out of checking it daily (I will know if my morning commute is going to suck). But I refuse to use it except to do things outside of the internet: go on Reddit to figure niche bike paths then go out biking. Go on reddit to find carpentry ideas then go woodworking. I don’t get in purely-online discusssions because you have no exit point.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#84

Post by floren »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #46

Someone said of programming languages that Algol 60 was so great that it improved not only on its predecessors, but also on its successors. I would say the same of Usenet when it comes to Reddit-like systems. In this day and age it could use a few updates but whenever I think of implementing forums, I always come back to Usenet and NNTP as the basic mechanism.

I'm delving back into Usenet again after a couple years and yeah, it really is good. Spam seems to be less of a problem every time I look in. Just find some groups that match your interests and if there's not much traffic, well, post! Just post. I'm on alt.ham-radio and some sub-groups, comp.misc, rec.crafts.brewing, rec.music.folk (pretty active!), alt.folklore.computers, and others.

I'm running my own news server now, which is easier than you'd think. Even if you don't run your own server (there's no real reason to) there are plenty of free public servers out there.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#85

Post by O1111OOO »

I thought it would be a good exercise to see what was out there (give other sites a chance), so I started following suggestions others have made. This is the list I currently have compiled.

https://lemmy.ml/ (https://join-lemmy.org/) : ideal reddit replacement

https://www.tiktok.com/ : from a purely entertainment value. This is number one. I was on TikTok last year and it was basically the only entertainment site I visited. I actually did not visit reddit last year - it felt like day old news since so much (entertainment) content was coming from TikTok.

https://mastodon.social/ : I need to get use to Voices/People first over actual story. Reddit (HN) was always article/story first. Probably why I never did Twitter.

https://kbin.social/ : good reddit replacement.

https://flingup.com/ : I quite like this one as a reddit replacement.

https://www.instagram.com/ : created my first acct here. Not sure what to expect. Seems boring and fake.

https://tildes.net/ : invite required: requested one - still waiting... Really quite nice: feels as if reddit and HN merged into one.

https://www.4chan.org/ : actually surprised that normal categories exist. I always thought it was just one giant cesspool.

https://9gag.com/ : lots of ads, tracking but captures the meme-aspect of reddit.

RSS Feeds continues to be my personally best (and tailored) solution.

---------

https://www.quora.com/ : did not like.

https://hive.blog/ : looks nice but do not like the crypto/payment aspect of it.

https://imgur.com/ : Will not let me browse while using a VPN. Bah! Fail.

https://non.io/ : pay to interact. I think many (like me) don't post enough to justify paying - when other sites deliver so much more.

---------

I may start looking at BBSes again. Excited at the thought of this.

I have been on IMDB for a couple of years. Writing reviews, creating lists, taking polls. Just saying there's a ton of stuff out there if you're looking to fill downtime and have fun. IMDB has been great fun for me.

https://the-federation.info/ : good place to find Fediverse sites.

---------

New ones I came across just now (for review):

https://rdrama.net/ (seems wild at first glance)

https://raddle.me/

https://sqwok.im/

---------

Many of us (especially me) stopped looking for a while. We find one thing and stick with it. Reddit serves as a reminder that there are 'plenty of other fish in the sea'. Let's go fishing...

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#86

Post by digitallyfree »

haolez wrote: post #72
evdubs wrote: post #31

Maybe not the best, and certainly not as popular as some recommended federated services, but Aether (getaether.net) has been interesting to use. It: - is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbeari…

Isn't it dead? It's a shame if true.

It certainly looks like it if you check their discussion board.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#87

Post by pndy »

tungah wrote: post #67
trostaft wrote: post #22

There's tildes, whose creator (guy who wrote reddit's AutoModerator) explains it better than I. https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Only thing is that it's invite only at the moment... And I seem to have too hastily deleted my reddit account to ask for an invite on their subreddit. EDIT: Got one, thanks!

I got 10 invites. How can I sent you one?

I wouldn't mind having one

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#88

Post by Zetice »

dsir wrote: post #7

It seems like a lot of the suggested alternatives are missing the mark a bit in regards to understanding what Reddit actually is (a community of communities). It seems like a lot of the platforms that are popping up are more akin to being just a huge bucket full of posts with tags opposed to being a collection of communities. They are sort of missing out on capturing the community part. I've been building a platform…

There's a reason people are missing the mark here; the "community" feature is not what gives Reddit its crazy high value for the vast majority of its users.

The ceiling is a lot lower for a community engine than it is for a link aggregator. Google News vs. Google+.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

#89

Post by dsir »

Karsteski wrote: post #63
dsir wrote: post #7

It seems like a lot of the suggested alternatives are missing the mark a bit in regards to understanding what Reddit actually is (a community of communities). It seems like a lot of the platforms that are popping up are more akin to being just a huge bucket full of posts with tags opposed to being a collection of communities. They are sort of missing out on capturing the community part. I've been building a platform…

Sounds very cool, good luck! :) Question though, how will you sustain this platform? I'd be happy to just pay some small fee per month and have some sort of guarantee that my data is not just being sold to the highest bidder. I'd like to be the customer on some social media platform for once

Cheers!

One of the key design decisions was to bake in different methods for monetization within each community so that the community admins/mods can get paid. We take a minority cut of each transaction to help fund the platform.

Each community has the ability to offer tiered monthly membership plans and can optionally gate individual pieces of content, or the entire community behind the memberships (the content gating part is a work in progress). We are also adding the ability for users to pay to bump posts and buy comment awards which the revenue is shared with the community owner. Basically we are looking at adding ways for the communities to make money in ways that don't come at the detriment to the community itself.

We are also exploring offering a platform wide subscription fee that would give users some additional benefits as well however we haven't fully fleshed this out yet.

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